Lewis Hamilton 'unlucky' in Italian GP pole position near-miss

Lewis Hamilton believes he was "really unlucky" not to pip Charles Leclerc to Italian GP pole - but says he is enjoying the "exciting" duel with Ferrari at Monza.

With the final laps of Q3 ruined by the farcical battle for a tow around F1's fastest lap, the battle for pole was ultimately settled by the first Q3 runs - which Leclerc won from Mercedes' Hamilton by a mere 0.036s and Valtteri Bottas by 0.047s.

But both Hamilton and Bottas reckon pole could have been theirs had they not had to lift when Kimi Raikkonen crashed ahead of them at the Parabolica. Hamilton was directly behind the Alfa Romeo when it spun off.

"I was really unlucky," Hamilton told Sky Sports F1. "I was just behind Kimi for my first lap. I probably started the lap a little too close so I was catching him. Obviously with a slightly slower car you have to make a slightly bigger gap for the tow.

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"I started catching him through the corners and I was thinking 'don't catch him too much' and I got into the last corner and he spun, and so I had to lift. With that lift I would have easily lost half a tenth and it would have been the difference between pole and second."

Nonetheless, the championship leader said: "But that's exiting. I love that it's that close and it's not multiple tenths."

Leclerc vs Hamilton compared

In side-by-side SkyPad analysis of Leclerc and Hamilton's laps, Anthony Davidson shows how the Mercedes had been fractionally ahead of Ferrari starting the backstraight which heads to the Parabolica - and then was still level pegging exiting the final turn despite inevitably having to ease off for Raikkonen.

In the video above, Sky F1's Davidson says: "Raikkonen spins out in front and Lewis surely has to back out of that ever so slightly.

"On the exit, despite a car spinning in front of him and clearly having to back out, the extra speed that the Mercedes inherently has under it when it goes through a high-speed corner is enough to keep him pretty much level pegging with the Ferrari.

"Unfortunately for him, onto that [pit] straight, just at the end that's what made the difference."

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Meanwhile, Leclerc said he had not been happy with his own first Q3 attempt.

"Mercedes were quick, we were very quick too," the Ferrari driver said.

"My lap was not special. I was way too close to Hulkenberg on the first timed lap. The slipstream was obviously amazing, but in the corners I was losing a lot. It was not ideal, I was way too close."

Hamilton and Bottas start between the two Ferraris on Sunday's grid and the Englishman said: "I'm really happy we improved the car bit by bit over the weekend and managed to get quite close to the Ferraris which is awesome."

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